Christopher Morgan talks betrayal, selling out and an upsetting alienation from a childhood favourite...

Midgar. That’s where all this started, for me and for many others – a love story played across seven golden, resplendently happy years. For others, it started much earlier back in the days of old 8-bit epics. For some of us, the love lasted longer than for others. The end of the affair, for me, came with the cheap slut that lacked even the dignity to call herself what she truly was (a tramp) – Final Fantasy X-2. And I won’t lie. I enjoyed it. It was cheap, it was dirty, it made mockery of everything Final Fantasy and I had shared for seven years, but in that slowly but surely declining marriage I was looking for a newer, sexier model and FFX-2 delivered.

The problem was, I couldn’t look at Final Fantasy the same way again. Something had been broken between us, something precious, fragile and wonderful to behold. As much as we tried, the magic wouldn’t come back. I had soiled myself by throwing away seven years of a once in a lifetime love for a trashy succubus with torn fishnets, giving into to my basest curiosities and in so doing, made Final Fantasy think she had to compete with the trollop.

How wrong she was.

Before continuing on this perhaps disturbingly erotic (but nonetheless apt) metaphor, it occurs to me I might want to make myself clear. Speak my intentions. Why am I writing this? Because there’s a nagging, raging thought that has been building in my cranium as I’ve watched the unbearable decline of a franchise that was once so dear to my heart lose all self-respect, all credibility and most importantly, all the trademarks that made Final Fantasy what it was.

As Final Fantasy XIII-2 launches in the US and UK, I cannot help but feel embarrassed, ashamed even, for SquareEnix. They’ve forgotten the most important lesson in life, clichéd and mushy as it is, it continues to hold true: true beauty comes from within, and damn is Final Fantasy XIII-2 ugly. Just to clarify, I haven’t played the game and have absolutely zero intention of doing so. Having sampled  a demo of it previously at the Tokyo Game Show last year, I already know what I’d be getting myself into; quick-time events (press X not to die!), a battle system that requires minimal interaction,  and worst of all, toe-curling, hair-raising dialogue from the mouths of emo-pup babes. And a main character called Noel. NOEL!

Let’s rewind a little. This game couldn’t exist without its predecessor, FFXIII. Announced five years before its actual release (a classic SquareEnix move and one so lacking in intelligent marketing that it literally astounds me every single time), from afar, XIII looked like it had some real promise. For all the scarce details of its gameplay, we were inundated with beautifully rendered screenshots, some seminal artwork and awe-inspiring locales. It looked more like a Final Fantasy game should. Of course, I waited with bated breath for the airships, world-map screen and class-specific character announcements that would obviously follow, but it turned out that I’d be waiting forever.

As release became ever closer, things took a shocking turn for the worse. Trailers and clips showed the same beautiful androgynous character types we’d seen throughout the franchise’s history, only this time their dialogue was as emo as their appearance. It was all about love, hope, freedom, and love and hope and hope and love. It was all suddenly so...Japanese – lofty words choc-full of existential, meaningless trite spliced with lines like “What happens when your actions end up ruining someone’s life?” and most telling of all, Leona Lewis played over it all. Leona...Lewis. If you’d told the fifteen year old me, obsessed with Final Fantasy VII that one day the winner of X-factor (or Pop Idol, as it was then) would sing the main theme for a Final Fantasy game, I’d have laughed you out of the room. I suppose it proves that reality can be far crueler than anything our imaginations can conjur.

At HMV Oxfrord Street, I found myself at the official launch for Final Fantasy XIII. Looking round at the crowd, I became aware that I was one of the oldest gamers in residence. At the age of 23, this was fairly shocking. I was surrounded by throngs of teenagers, all of them waxing lyrical about how amazing FFX was, how FFXII had changed their lives.  Suppressing eye rolls, I asked if they had played the older games. “I tried, but the graphics were crap.” Oh...god.

Right then, I knew. Final Fantasy was a lost cause. During the 80’s, a frustrated game designer named Hironobu Sakaguchi made one last ditch attempt to get his creative work off the ground. He would pour everything he had into it, all his creative energy and all his (at the time) fairly limited experience. Convinced of the game's failure before it was even released, Sakaguchi gave it everything he had. This was to be his last hope, his final fantasy. And so a star was born.

After years of unprecedented success, Sakaguchi resigned from Square in 2003 after being demoted. This lead to Square’s capital taking a hit and forced the company into a merger with long-term rival Enix. Thus, SquareEnix was born.  To think that Square voluntarily demoted their biggest creative asset is astounding, but looking at where the franchise is today, perhaps they did Sakaguchi a favour. I wonder what he makes of how badly they’ve bastardized his baby. These days, Sakaguchi is making games with his new company Mistwalker Games for multiple platforms to reasonable success.

Back to this skewed reality, FFXIII-2 builds on the foundations that its parent setup. SquareEnix claimed loudly and often how they had listened diligently to the fans, sought their feedback and used it to help create the kind of game that fans would want to play. Well, I don’t know who they were listening to, but it sure as hell wasn’t me.

I really tried with FFXIII. I really did. I tried three times, in fact. It was an unpleasant experience, and mostly because I so wanted it to be a good one. But I can still recall with piercing clarity the moment I gave up once and for all – chasing around a baby chocobo that usually resided in one of the character’s hair for over ten minutes. Mindless, banal, embarrassing filler. “Oh, go fuck yourself” were my last words to FFXIII.

FFXIII-2 takes place three years after the events of the first game and has you playing as Serah, Lightning’s sister who spent a brief stint as a crystal but is now back in human form after Lightning supposedly died to save her. Imagine our collective surprise when it turns out Lightning didn’t die, she only got sent through time to 700 years in the future (no explanation). There Lightning met Noel, our trusty cardboard cut-out teenage farm-boy type who has to save the universe by traveling back through time to tell Serah her sister is still alive. From there, they travel back and forth through time trying to correct the timeline. That is the plot of FFXIII-2. Now go back and read it again. Surely I can’t be the only one who isn’t simultaneously shaking his head, scrunching his eyes and failing to resist the urge to laugh?

FFXIII-2 has two playable characters. In a franchise famed for its variety of colourful characters, this is borderline sacrilege. What makes this especially raw is that when asked about the possibility of a sequel, the producers said they were interested in continuing the story of Lightning. Apparently the best way of doing that is by making her a non-playable character for the majority of the game.

The alternative that SquareEnix have included instead is to have monsters join your party as an ever-shifting “guest” party member. That’s right, this pokemon-esque feature is apparently Square’s solution to complaints about characters with a lack of personality and depth – non-speaking AI monsters tamed to fight for you. But wait! You can have Lightning in your party if you download the DLC (at a price, of course), fight and beat her. Of course, she’s essentially going to be a monster with a different character skin and have no additional dialogue, not to mention having her in your party is an enormous paradox that completely unravels the already overly-complex storyline like a kitten with a string-ball. Rumour has it they’re considering using this model for additional DLC further down the line too, so be prepared for Snow, Hope and possibly Sazh to join your party as mannequin-like puppets devoid of what little personality they had in the first game. If it sounds like I’m angry it’s because I am.

Seriously, when did Square get so desperate? It’s just depressing.

If SquareEnix continue to drag Final Fantasy through the mud like this, there is going to come a point when even the most hardcore otakus are going to stop buying their games. What’s so infuriating about all this is saving the franchise would be so simple (see end of article), but Square seem hell-bent on going further  in the wrong direction rather than simply stopping, turning around and admitting they made a mistake.

It’s already widely known that FFXIII-2 ends with that champion of cop outs, the pariah of all “fuck you”’s - a “To Be Continued” screen. The fact that Square have the nerve to not only cash cow a game as shamelessly as they have with this one, but to actually go one step further and not even give consumers a real “ending” is testament to their increasing lack of respect for their fans. Expect a slew of DLC and the inevitable announcement of FFXIII-3 to come shortly.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We often forget that the power to get what we want is in our hands. We’re the consumers, we’re the ones buying their products and they can only make money if we continue to give it to them. If you want to see Final Fantasy get back to the way it should be, don’t buy this game.  Don’t even toy with the notion. For the first time ever, I’m not buying a “main series” Final Fantasy game and as a true Final Fantasy fan, I am asking you: Please. Stop. Buying. This. Shit.

I’ll be following this piece up with another one shortly titled “How to Save Final Fantasy.” And no, perhaps unbelievably, it isn’t by burning the SquareEnix office to the ground.

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